Mar 20, 2008, 7:04 GMT
Jerusalem - US Republican presidential hopeful John McCain Wednesday expressed understanding for Israel's tough response to near daily rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip, as he visited the country's battered southern town of Sderot.
If his state of Arizona was attacked from across the border, its citizens too would demand a 'very vigorous response,' Israeli media quoted him as telling reporters after touring the town.
Sderot, located some two kilometres from the Gaza Strip to the north-east, has borne the brunt of more than 7,000 locally-produced Qassam, al-Quds and Nasser rockets fired from the Gaza Strip since the attacks started in 2001, about one year after the Palestinian uprising erupted amid a deadlock in peace negotiations.
'No nation in the world can be attacked incessantly ... without responding,' McCain, who had toured the town of more than 20,000 inhabitants accompanied by US Senator Joe Lieberman, told a joint news conference with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
McCain declined to give a detailed outline of what his Middle East policies would look like if he won the November US presidential election, saying he was on a Congressional fact-finding mission, and not campaigning.
But he expressed support for US President George W. Bush's effort to get Israel and the Palestinians, who picked up negotiations late last year ending a seven-year freeze in their peace process, to sign an agreement on paper before he leaves office in January.
McCain said he was 'not sure' whether the parties would succeed to reach a deal in that period of time, but he said he did believe the Bush administration was making 'every possible effort to do so.'
The Republican candidate, who also visited the Jewish Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, earlier said in a meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, that he believed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was keen on getting the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks going.
Since their revival shortly after a high-profile peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland in November, the talks have threatened to run aground over the Gaza violence, as well as over continued Israeli settlement construction.
The Palestinian militant rocket attacks from Gaza prompted Israel to launch an intense Israeli air and ground campaign in the salient to try and thwart the missiles early this and late last month, which left over 120 Palestinians dead.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who met the Arizona senator in the afternoon, said Israel could halt the almost daily rocket fire from the Gaza Strip without a major ground offensive in the salient, as an increasing number of Israelis are demanding.
'We will stop the (rocket) fire by the creation of deterrence in the South which will make (the Gaza militants) think twice before they shoot again,' the Ha'aretz daily quoted the premier as saying.
McCain, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post daily, earlier said he could not provide an answer how to halt the rocket attacks.
The main focus of the interview, however, was on Iran, which McCain said flatly 'is a threat to the region.'
He said that while Tehran was 'obviously pursuing nuclear weapons,' it was also arming and training extremists to send into Iraq, supporting Hezbollah and influencing Syria.
'At the end of the day, we can still not afford to have Iran with nuclear weapons,' McCain said. 'We know they have ambitions that are not just aimed at the State of Israel,' but also included 'destabilization of the entire region upon which the United States' national security interests rest.'
Hamas and Hezbollah represented a similar threat, he maintained, saying that if the two militant groups 'succeed here, they are going to succeed everywhere, not only in the Middle East, but everywhere.'
'They are dedicated to the extinction of everything that the US, Israel and the West believe and stand for,' he said.
In the interview, McCain also backed Israel's refusal to negotiate with Hamas.
'Someone is going to have to answer me the question of how you are going to negotiate with an organization that is dedicated to your extinction,' he said, in reference to the Hamas charter which calls for Israel to be replaced by an Islamic state in all of historic Palestine.
McCain, arrived in Israel Tuesday evening, accompanied by Senators Lieberman of Connecticut and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, for a lightning visit.
In addition to meeting Livni, Olmert and Defence Minister Ehud Barak Wednesday, and Israeli President Shimon Peres Tuesday night, he also toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Centre, and visited the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest shrine.
He leaves Wednesday night for France and Britain, the next stage of his current week-long tour, which he says is a fact-finding mission rather than a campaign trip.
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